Dark Castle

"Tsk tsk... someone confused Dark and Crap again, didn't they?"

I crept into the castle gates as the full moon barely lit the dank atmosphere around me. A rat scuttled into a hole as I entered the great hall, eerie, foreboding. Four doors led in four directions to four dank corners of the castle. I took the left door. The set of stairs ahead of me unrolls, a sea of stone-cold steps. I walk down the steps, seeing the rats scuttle around. A pixel of my body touches a rat. I die.

I reappear at the top of the stairs, as if I have some kind of extra chance at life. I tilt my arm and toss a stone at the rat, turning into a pile of indistinguishable rat mush. A bat swoops through the air. I'm halfway down a staircase, powerless to stop it. The bat swoops past my head. I laugh as my body takes the hit. It swoops past me again. I die.
Back at the stairs again. Will this nightmare never end? I race down the stairs, killing the bats and rats. I make it to the bottom of the stairs, where a door appears out of nowhere. A zombie comes out of the door. I die.

Although I should be long gone, my journey through the castle is not over yet. By some mysterious force I can continue! I run down the stairs, killing the bats and rats, kill the zombie, and run to the edge of the stone platform. As I take a step from the platform I lose my footing. There I spin, unable to control myself. I regain my footing. A bat hits me on the head. I die, rip the game cartridge out of my Genesis, and throw it out the window.

Welcome to the horrible world of Dark Castle. No wait, horrible isn't strong enough. Let me try that again.

Welcome to the excreble world of Dark Castle, possibly the worst game I have ever had the misfortune to review. I can basically run down a checklist of things that should be good in a game, and are seriously awry in Dark Castle.

Bad graphics? Check! Dark Castle has weedy sprites, an intro sequence that would make Altered Beast say ''Egads! That's awful!'' and bland, uninviting backdrops that wouldn't look out of place on the Master System. Even then, they'd still look crap. Your main character is made out of cardboard- and not the good kind you can wobble to make a cool noise with, I mean the really cheap stuff that's all soggy and dull. The rest of the graphics look pretty corrugated, too.

Naff sound? Double check! Well, better make that one check. You see, Dark Castle only has one music track in it- this is the traditional 'evil castle' music, in ear splitting monaural sound and one instrument playing. This devastating riff lasts about 20 seconds, before a very obvious repeat. That's it. The music never changes. Ever. Well, unless it changes when you complete the game, but rather you than me. As for the sound effects- look on the bright side, at least it has some. Pity they were so utterly stupid. Bats that squeak like a badly oiled tea trolley, your main character, a reject from the Bill n Ted movie auditions (his vocabulary consists of 'Woah' and... that's it really) However, my personal favourite is the evil eyeball. ''Nenenenene!'' it screams! ''AHHH! Make it stop!'' I reply.

Wretched control system? You betcha. Dark Castle doesn't really have one to speak of- I never felt in control of the game. I suspect that making a fist and mashing the buttons randomly would give me an equal chance of surviving this game, because the controls have as much response as a shopping trolley with polished mirrors for wheels slipping along an ice rink. Your controls are so complex and enthralling, I'll even detail them for you in this review, because that's the kind of guy I am:

A- Jump. You can jump left and right a preset distance. Once you jump, you cannot control your character in mid air. Most jumps require pixel-perfect timing that if you miss them by the smallest of distances, the character will plummet to their death. Bare in mind that if you don't jump over such tricky obstacles as steps and minute ledges, you'll fall over. I think the game developers took the words 'Watch your step' too literally. It would also help if the graphics didn't suck.

B- Crouch. Who cares, you'll never use it. It looks like your character is kneeling down and crying if you press it repeatedly, so I'm guessing he feels the pain as much as I do.

C- Throw a Stone. In the wonderful world of Dark Castle, there is no gravity. When I say throw a stone, I really mean shoot a stone out of your arm-shaped missile launcher. You can move your arm up and down to change the angle of the missile launcher, but it still seems to be thrown in a random direction regardless.

And that, my friends, is Dark Castle in a nutshell. The game can be broken down into two steps- choosing your level and dying repeatedly. There are 4 initial levels to choose from, all so tragically bad and difficult I have never beaten a single one. I didn't want to, but it's the principle of the thing! Even the toughest of games can be beaten with skill- the only way to beat Dark Castle, and a way I'm sure you'll find most satisfying, is to take a sledgehammer and smash it into space dust.

I had a really good joke prepared about the AI in Dark Castle, but then I realised there isn't any. I know this is the Genesis and all, but even the lowest badnik in Sonic the Hedgehog could at least shoot at you. In Dark Castle they only need to walk into you to kill you, but it's a mercy killing. If there is one good thing about Dark Castle, it can be over and done with very quickly.

Calling Dark Castle **** is being insulting to ****. A piece of **** doesn't deserve to be compared to Dark Castle. After all, what did it do to you? I have never played a game as hideous as this. Thanks very much, Electronic Arts. Yes, this is the same EA who made games like Sword of Sodan and Budokan. Or alternatively, the same EA who is now the biggest third-party publisher in the world. How did they get so rich when they made garbage like this?

On a final, personal note to the developers: (the rest of you can skip this paragraph) You are the worst developers I have ever seen. If a thousand monkeys coded for the Genesis for a thousand years, they wouldn't achieve anything. But even their jumbled hash of a game would still be better than what you have created in Dark Castle.

Overall

Dark Castle is so awful, so mind-bogglingly crap, that my ridiculous similes can't even begin to describe how putrid it is. Scrape all the skin of your body with a blunt butter knife, then roll around for salt and have a refreshing swim in sulphuric acid. I imagine it would feel like playing this game. This is the kind of thing you scooped up, placed inside a bag, set fire to and left outside someone's doorstep when you were a kid. If you find any copies of Dark Castle, I suggest you do the same.

Graphics- 1/10
Sound- 1/10
Gameplay- 0/10
Lastability- Approximately 10 seconds
Overall- 4%

Reviewer's Score: 1/10, Originally Posted: 06/10/03, Updated 06/10/03